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Picas and Points for Layout | with Measurements

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Page Layout Measurements Free Desktop Publishing Newsletter! Points and Picas By Jacci Howard Bear, About.com Discuss in my Forum

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Advertisement Stop inching your way into desktop publishing. Plunge into picas for page layout measurments. For many, the measurement system of choice for typesetting and publication is picas and points. If your work involves complex, multi-page such as , magazines, , or newsletters, working in picas and points can be a real timesaver. And if you plan to work in the or magazine publishing industry, you'll likely be required to stop thinking in or millimeters for page layout. So why not start now. In fact, you're already half-way there since if you use you already work with points.

Newsletter layouts frequently involve small pieces that are difficult to measure in fractions of inches. Picas and points provide easily for those tiny amounts. Have you heard of the magic of thirds in design? Quick, divide a 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper into thirds horizontally. Now, find 3.66 inches on the ruler. It's not easy. But 11 inches is 66 picas so each third is 22 picas. Much simpler, but that's just the beginning. Video Points are the smallest unit of measurement. Type and Make a T-Shirt Transfer are measured in points with 72 points to the inch.

Use picas for measuring width and depth, margins, and other larger distances.

Picas and points have a direct relationship to each other. There Make Business Cards in are 12 points in a pica.

If you're a metric maven you may have a bit more trouble with the conversion to picas, but for those of us raised on inches it's simpler. There are 6 picas to an inch. A standard US letter size page is 8.5 by 11 inches or 51 by 66 picas. (6 picas are More Videos

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/intermediate/a/picaspoints.htm[9/9/09 1:17:07 PM] Picas and Points for Page Layout | Typesetting with Pica Measurements

approximately 25 mm)

The letter p is used to designate picas as in 22p or 6p. With 12 points to the pica, half a pica would be 6 points written as 0p6. About.com Shopping 17 points would be 1p5 (1 pica = 12 pts, plus the leftover 5 pts). Photoshop Elements

From $41.39 at 16 stores Your software can take away some of the math for you. For instance, with picas as your default measurements in PageMaker, if you type 0p28 (28 points) into the control palette when setting indents or other settings it will convert it to 2p4 automatically.

If you're converting existing designs to pica measurements, you may find it necessary to know the size of fractions of points (for example 3/32 of an inch converts to 6.75 points or 0p6.75). This chart [offsite link] includes fractions from 1/32 to 1 inch expressed in picas, points, and decimals too.

If you want to create dummy layouts for a design, remember that depth is measured in picas. So if you want to know how much vertical a 48 occupies divide 48 by 12 (12 pts to the pica) to get 4 picas of vertical space. This article [offsite link] from an online journalism related course describes this in more detail.

I may not have convinced you to change your ways but I hope you at least come away from this with a basic understanding of how picas and points are used in desktop publishing. If you really want to take a stab at using picas in your page layout, I invite to first try out the series of calculations on page 2.

Next > Learning to Use Picas and Points

Intermediate Tasks > Measurement Systems > Picas for Page Layout

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New posts to the DTP Classroom forums: THIS FORUM IS MOVING http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/intermediate/a/picaspoints.htm[9/9/09 1:17:07 PM]